USA > Wisconsin > Winnebago County > History, Winnebago County, Wisconsin: Its Cities, Towns, Resources, People > Part 4
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The explanation of their name is simple when relieved from the numerous explanations that have been given, for the most part erroneous. Dr. Dorsey, a student of the Siouan language, says the Siouan root changa or hanga, signifies first, foremost, original, ancestral. Thus the Winnebago call themselves Ho- changa-ra. "the people speaking the original language." The student of dialect can easily trace in the various spelling quoted above the attempt to reduce the gutteral sounds of the Winne- bago name to a written language, though their explanations and
' Bay de Puans was an ancient name of Green Bay.
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THE WINNEBAGO TRIBE.
definitions have often gone far afield. Their name as known to the whites, however, is not so easy to understand. The migrat- ing Algonquian tribes despised the Winnebago, as they were of a different stock, speaking a different language, and tried at once to drive them out; but these savages were no match for the Winnebago, who had the power by numbers or prowess to main- tain their place in their new home. If the name by which they were called by these Algonquian neighbors, Ovenibigoutz, had been translated at Quebec when first heard by the French, as mean, base or vile in place of Puans, it would have more correctly expressed as intended, the extreme disfavor of their neighbors, and this is the rational explanation of the name which has come down to us as Winnebago.
Perrot, as related by La Potherie as the earliest traditions of the tribe, gives the circumstances of their fall as their disregard of others' rights. He says the nation was populous, very re- doubtable, spared no one and violated all the laws of nature, as they were sodomites, and even had intercourse with beasts. If any stranger came among them he was cooked in their kettles. They declared war on all the other nations, though they had only stone hatchets and knives. When the Ottawa sent envoys to them they were eaten; and then the nations formed an alliance against them, which occasioned civil war among themselves. They finally united all their forces in one village of 5,000 men; but an epidemic occured which reduced them to 1,500. "Despite all these misfortunes they sent a party of 500 warriors against the Foxes, who dwelt on the other shore of the lake, but they perished in a tempest." It is supposed this was on Little Lake Butte des Morts, as it had been stated the Puans resided on an island which it is supposed was Doty island, where they had lived from the earliest times; and the Fox tribes resided on the oppo- site side of the lake from very early times. Reduced to despair and famine the other nations took pity on them, ceased to make war, and the Illinois sent 500 men. including "fifty of the most prominent persons in their nation" to carry them a supply of provisions. "Those man eaters received them with the utmost gratitude," but at the same time meditated sacrificing the Illi- nois to the shades of their dead. A large cabin was erected to lodge their guests; but while the Illinois were dancing their bow strings were cut and the Winnebago "threw themselves on the Illinois and massaered them. not sparing one man, and made a general feast of their flesh." In a few years the Illinois, assemb-
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Li Liverester Chicale
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region erected into the state of Wisconsin. There is no contem- porary narrative inspired by Nicolet which gives a hint of the place at which this council was held, or the location of the Winne- bago village, which was the objective point of Nicolet's voyage. The habitat of the Winnebago during this period must therefore be sought from other narratives and maps, and these clearly show the Winnebago village of 1634, and for 200 years thereafter to have been at the foot of Lake Winnebago, and from the later accounts, which give a more exact locus in quo, on Doty island, in what is now the cities of Menasha and Neenah, on the Fox river, yet on the shore of Lake Winnebago.
It has been heretofore stated that Champlain's map of 1632, made two years before Nicolet's visit, named the "Nation des Puans" on "Lac des Puans." Also the map of Jean Boisseau's of 1643, which is found in Lennox Library in New York, and published in "Jesuit Relations," has "La Nation des Puans," on "Lac des Puans," which discharges through "R. des Puans." The next map to mention the tribe is that of Marquette. His journal of the famous voyage through the Fox river valley was published in Paris by Thevenot in 1681, with his real map of the voyage. It places the "Puans" village at the foot of Lake Win- nebago. The master of this voyage was Joliet, and his map also places the "Puans"' village at the foot of Lake of the Winnebago. Father Hennepin also places the word "Ocitagan" against Lake Winnebago on his map, dated 1698. He was aso a traveler among them and this is his attempt to spell their own name, rendered by Charlevoix at Otchagras. The maps so far mentioned are all of the Nicolet century, while those of the next century, which show the village, all place it at the foot of the lake, which always bore their name.
The name of the lake as "the Lake of the Puans" has some value in identification of the site of the Winnebago Village. As nearly all the early voyagers approached it from Green Bay they named Green Bay "La Bay des Puans," because it was the way to reach the Puans. Charlevoix has said that it was the Puans of Lake of the Puans who "transferred" their name to the Bay. Leaving the Bay in the progress of their voyage they entered the "Riviere des Puans." This was the earliest name of Fox river. It is found on the earliest maps as mentioned above. It is found on the maps of La IIontan of 1709, as "Riviere des Puants," and also on another map by the same author of 1709 as "R. des Puants." Allouez, in 1670, in his journal refers to
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it as "Riviere des Puans." He also approaches by the river of the Winnebago up its boiling rapids, the "Lac des Puans." Radisson as early as 1659 refers to it as "the great lake of the Stinkings," a name by which Allouez refers to the lake in 1666, and through all the years down to this day the lake still retains the name it bore in the very earliest narratives. It was natural that this very large and important lake as well as this important and historical waterway should have been given the name of this important tribe, and it is impossible to show it was given for any reason except the obvious one, that the tribe lived on the banks of the river and shore of the lake which bore its name.
There is no historic reference narrative of travel or maps which places the Winnebago at any location other than Lake Winne- bago during the century in which Nicolet visited the region, nor until 1760, when they seem to have divided into three villages with their head village still on Lake Winnebago.
Perrot visited the Fox river region for a number of years, and took some of the Winnebago with the other tribes to the great council at Sault Ste. Marie when Sr. Lusson took formal pos- session of the west, in the name of the French King. In 1690, while in this valley, the Fox tribes who resided on the west shore of the Little Lake Butte des Morts, contemplated treachery to Perrot, and he was informed of their intentions by the "chief of the Puans," who acted as his messenger, and remained his stead- fast friend. IIe advised and helped to prevent the Foxes making an alliance with the Iroquois of New York, which they contem- plated. and Perrot was determined to prevent.
In the Fox Wars.
1
Later in the long Fox war they formed the third party in an alliance between the Foxes and Sauk, and were ever present with the Foxes in that long battle which they raged against the French throughout the Fox river valley and the prairie of the Illinois. This was the war to save the region of the golden fleece to the fur trade of France, in which the war whoop of the Foxes was heard around the world; "a dreary half century of spasmodic conflict, which absorbed the attention and helped to drain the treasury of New France, contributing not a little to her down- fall;" meanwhile, as Bancroft remarks, the "Foxes were a na- tion, passionate and untamable, springing up into new life from every defeat. and though reduced in the number of their war-
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THE WINNEBAGO TRIBE.
riors, yet present everywhere by their ferocious enterprise and savage daring." Throughout those long years of frontier war- fare the Winnebago were everywhere the silent allies, wearing the livery of the forest and committing the terror of their name to strike dismay to the border post. And though the Foxes are mostly mentioned the French were aware of the close friendship of their allies, the Winnebago. As early as 1714 Ramezay had re- ported the Winnebago as friendly to the Foxes, which date the colonial office at Paris had determined on the extermination of the Fox tribe. At this time Father Marest writes the Governor that, "the Puans were sixty brave men, all boatmen."
The long enmity between the Winnebago and the Illinois was a part of the French war, and a relic of ancient days when the Winnebago had been almost destroyed by the Illinois. The Winnebago were with the Foxes in their raids against this tribe in 1723. Captain De Lignery was sent up the river in 1724, and called a council of the tribes at the old French fort at Green Bay. Those present were the Winnebago, Foxes and Sauk. The council to induce the tribes to cease their war on the Illinois was fruitless, as the Winnebago declared the Illinois retained some of their tribe prisoners, and an exchange must be effected before a treaty. However, the difference seemed to have compromised, as at a council held by the same officer, June 7, 1726, with the Win- nebago, Foxes and Sauk, a treaty was settled by which these tribes consented not to fight the Illinois again. Very soon after this, however, war broke out afresh and the frontier rang with the savage war cry.
The French had sent an army against the Fox palisade or Fort village on the west shore of Little Lake Butte des Morts, under de Louvigny, in 1716, opposite the Winnebago village on the eastern shore. The three days' battle and seige had resulted in a treaty of peace, but in which the French had no confidence. They determined to establish a post in the border of the Sioux country to prevent an alliance with the Foxes and that powerful tribe of the plains. This equipment with soldiers and goods for trade made their way over Fox river toward the head of Lake Pepin. to establish this post. The journal of the voyage was made by Father Guignes. As they passed the Fox river he says of the visit to the Winnebago, August 14, 1727: "The chiefs met him there three leagues from their village with peace calumets and refreshments of bears' meat and escorted them into their village mid discharge of musketry and great demonstrations of
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joy, requesting them to remain some time. There were sixty to eighty men in the village. Both men and women are tall and well built. They were located on the borders of a pretty lake at thirty-five miles from La Baye and eight leagues from the Foxes." The Foxes seem to have been on the upper Fox river at this season.
When Captain De Lignery arrived at La Baye with his expe- dition against the Foxes, composed of 450 Frenchmen and 1,200 savages, in the month of August, 1728, he captured three Winne- bago whom he handed over to the tribes. They put them to death with slow torture, and ate them. He then pushed on up the Fox river to the village of the Winnebago on Doty island, which had been abandoned several days before, and burned the wigwams and fort, and "ravaged their fields of Indian corn, which is their principal article of food."
In pursuance of their policy to combine all the tribes against the Foxes the French in some manner bought over the Winne- bago, the lifelong friends of the Foxes and Sauk. So we read that in the autumn of 1729 word was brought to Quebec by information given by the Indians, of an attack by the Winnebago, Ottawa and Menominee on a Fox village, in which there were killed 100 Fox warriors and seventy women and children. Among the killed of the assaulting party were four of the Winne- bago. The Winnebago having broken with their neighbors and ancient friends, the Foxes, by the treacherous and unprovoked slaughter, were now in terror for the consequences of their mis- erable acts. Further attempts against the Fox tribes were pro- jected from Quebec, and by the fall of 1729 Sieur Captain Marin appeared at the old French fort at Green Bay, and repaired its fallen roofs. He had with him ten Frenchmen. On September 10 the Winnebago returned from their hunt and went to Marin to assure him that they still remained faithful to the French, presenting him with three slaves. They were rewarded by pow- der, bullets, hatchets, guns and knives. Some days after, having ascertained that the Foxes were not in the country, the Winne- bago took their families and camped on Dendo island, now in the City of Menasha, in Fox river, adjoining Doty island, where "their former fort stood." But very soon the Foxes and Sauk surprised some Winnebago fishermen, and then began a long siege of the Winnebago, by erecting on the Doty island water side two forts to command the water in all directions. The
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siege lasted two months; but was finally abandoned after Marin came with the Menominee to aid the Winnebago.
Before 1739, after being at enmity with the Foxes for ten years, the old friendship was revived, and at a council in Quebec, held that year with the western savages, the Winnebago chief spoke for mercy for the Foxes, some representatives of whom were pres- ent. The following year, at a council held in Montreal, the Win- nebago chief again spoke for the good will of the French for "their kinsman, the Foxes and Sauk." The next year they ap- peared in Montreal again and reported they had returned to their old home on Doty island. While at a council at Quebec the next year the Mayomba, chief of the Mascoutins, whispered to Beau- harnois that the Winnebago sought a refuge in their village the year before, as they feared the Foxes. At this council the Win- nebago said half of their village had returned to its old home and half was at Rock river. The Rock river band were notified to join the Fox river band to form one village. Serotchon and Chelaonois were Winnebago chiefs present and promised medals by Beauharnois; but he had none then to bestow, they must wait until next year. Sieur de Clignancourt had sole right in 1747 to trade at Green Bay with the Winnebago.
In Other Border Wars.
By some very ancient maps in possession of Mr. James G. Albright, of Milwaukee, which bear dates of 1755, 1756, 1757, the "Otchagras" village is marked against Lake Winnebago. About this time the De Langlades had settled in Wisconsin as the first pioneers, and in a few years the great war between France and England had its influence on this farthest frontier, where the bold warrior, Captain Charles de Langlade, was appointed to command the western tribes. With his motley throng of savages there were about 100 Winnebago, and midst the din of Brad- dock's defeat was "mingled the blood curdling screech of the Winnebago." They were at the council, with Montcalm, on the banks of Lake George; and at the massacre of Fort William Henry, and at the fall of Quebec.
After the Fleur de lis was hauled down from Quebec and England took all Canada under her authority, commandants and soldiers were sent west to assume command of the ancient border posts, which had been under the gentle sway of France since the
1 " Bravest of the Brave, Captain Charles de Langlade, " by P. V. Law- son, pp. 65-86, 87, 114, 143.
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first white men came. By 1762 Lieut. James Gorrell was in com- mand of the remnants of the old French fort at Green Bay, and held a council with a Winnebago chief, who promised to send the belt he had received to the other two chiefs of his nation. He reports soon after that "a chief belonging to a second puans town arrived." In August the Winnebago chief from the third. town came and declared he had never fought against the Eng- lish. They all requested a gunsmith, a trader and rum. The following summer (1763), when Captain Etherington, after the massacre at Old Mackinaw, sent word to Gorrell to go to him with the garrison, the Winnebago were among the four Indian tribes which formed his escort.
In his journal Lieut. James Gorrell reports of the "Indian war- riors, besides women and children depending on the post at Green Bay," there were "Puans, 150 at the end of Puan's lake (Winnebago) and over against Louistontant."
It was in 1766 that the celebrated Captain Jonathan Carver made his voyage up the historic Fox river and passed four days enjoying the hospitality of the Winnebago village on Doty island, then presided over by their queen, Glory of the Morning, or Hopokoekau, who had married Sebrevoir De Carrie, an officer of the French army, who, after resigning in 1729, became the first trader among the Winnebago. Three sons and one daughter were born of the union. He re-entered the army and died for his flag before Quebec April 28, 1760. Captain Carver called the village "the great town of the Winnebago" and said it contained fifty houses, which were strongly built with palisades.
During the war of the Revolution there was not a friend of the colonists in all Wisconsin, and Captain Charles de Langlade, now in the red uniform of a British officer, recruited his dusky troops from among the Winnebago to join Burgoyne's invasion, but all had abandoned the English general before his surrender. The Winnebago received the war belt from De Peyster, in com- mand at Old Mackinaw, and had notice to be ready to go to Ilamilton's aid, at Vincennes, in the autumn of 1778. In the party of savages who went down the Mississippi in the spring to aid IIamilton but returned on receiving word of his surrender to George Roger Clark, there were Winnebago. On their return to Old Mackinaw with Goutier the Winnebago were at once sent (in June, 1779) south through Michigan to commit depredations and "bring in some prisoners." The Winnebago repaired to Montreal with other western savages under De Langlade and
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returned on news of the operations of George Roger Clark in Illinois. When Lieut. Gov. Sinclair sent the army of savages under Captain de Langlade to the massacre of St. Louis there was a band of Winnebago, as usual, in his party. The assault on the embankment at the stone warehouse was made by the Winnebago, who left one chief and three warriors dead on the parapet, while four others were badly wounded, the only casual- ity of the expedition. Governor Sinclair reports in July, 1780, sending sixty Winnebago and a party of other Indians south to the Ohio and Wabash rivers to intercept convoys of provisions intended for Americans in the Illinois region.
After the close of the Revolutionary war the British fur trader had no intention of giving up the rich fur bearing region of Wis- consin, and began at once to keep the savages in good feeling, by a liberal distribution of presents, an annual favor which was accorded the Winnebago and others for many years and until after the close of the last war in 1815. At the instance of the merchants of Montreal in 1787, after the cession of the region now Wisconsin, the British sent Mr. Ainsee up the Fox river to the Mississippi with a "canoe loaded with thirteen bales of goods" for presents to Wisconsin savages. At the Portage he "assembled all the Puants to give them a speech and made them presents of goods, rum and tobacco." In the same report Ainsee gives the number of Puants as 340 men in "the villages of the Puants alto- gether."
The principal or head village of the Winnebago was still on Lake Winnebago, as it had been since long prior to the coming of Nicolet in 1634. The first record of any other village was the reference given from Gorrell in 1762. During the Revolution, when Goutier took to the woods on snowshoes to rouse the clans for the spring campaign of 1778, he mentions "the great village of the Puants of the lake, which was the strongest one."
Antoine LeClaire, a trader who settled in Milwaukee in 1800, mentions sending out "engages" to trade with the Indians, "on Winnebago Lake to the Winnebago." The merchants of Montreal reported to the agents of the crown, in 1786, that the Winnebago numbered 600 men, and had their first village only twelve leagues (thirty miles) from "La Baye," and "being on the road to the Mississippi, they are frequently troublesome to the traders pass- ing." This system of claiming to own the river and exacting presents for the right to pass had been practiced for many years by the tribe, and had been a frequent cause of strife between the
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HISTORY OF WINNEBAGO COUNTY.
Winnebago on Doty island and the numerous traders obliged to stem the tides of the Fox river to reach their posts along the Mississippi river.
The frontier disquiet of the Indians, inspired by British agents, finally resulted in sending Mad Anthony Wayne into the border lands of Ohio, where he fought several successful battles with the savages, the most desperate and successful one being that near Maumee City in Ohio on the 30th of August, 1794. The Winnebago had been led into these border troubles and were among the savages defeated in that disastrous battle. Mr. Wil- liam J. Snelling relates that he remembers a Winnebago at the Wisconsin portage who met travelers with a human hand dan- gling on his breast, which he had taken from a Yankee soldier at Tippecanoe, and says sixty Winnebago were killed in that battle.
The last war with England was declared on June 19, 1812, by the President's proclamation. Before it was possible to reinforce the small garrison at Fort Mackinac, on the island of that name, it was surprised and captured and held during the war as a rally outpost of the British, from which the savages of Wisconsin were constantly recruited to add to the frontier horrors of that war. It is said that after the capture of Proctor's camp in the battle of the Thames bales of scalps were discovered on which had been paid a bounty by the British agents. The Winnebago took part in many of the important movements of the British on the western border. When Colonel Robert Dickson, the "Red Head," gathered the tribes for the English in 1812 he ran into Green Bay with 100 Sioux, and enlisted Tomah and the Grizzly Bear with 100 Menominee, and a large body of Winnebago led by Teal, One-eyed Decorah and other chiefs. They voyaged over to Mackinac island and captured the fort. from the Americans, July 17, 1812, without a blow, after which the Winnebago and Sioux returned home. In the spring of 1813, when Colonel Dickson rallied the clans again for the war, there sailed out of the Fox river in his train, beside the Sioux and Menominee, a considerable band of Winnebago under their chiefs Old Decorah, Carry- maunce, Winnosheek, Pesheu or the Wild Cat, Sausamaunee, Black Wolf, Sarcel or the Teal, and Neokautah or Four Legs, with Michael Brisbois as their interpreter. Arriving at Fort Meigs too late for the action, they retired to Detroit, from whence they sailed under Proctor and Dickson to Sandusky and attacked the fort so gallantly defended by the young Major George Cro-
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ghan, where they were defeated. In June, 1813, Colonel Dickson emerged at Mackinac from a long sojourn among the Wisconsin tribes, bringing with him 600 savages and their families, to be sent to General Proctor as a part of his force. There were 130 Winnebago in the party. After eating nearly all of Proctor's available provisions and committing wanton depredations on the settlers' live stock the Wisconsin Indians returned home. Dur- ing the winter of 1813-1814 a delegation of Wisconsin savages visited Quebec, where they were warmly welcomed by Sir George Prevost. The Winnebago were represented by Lassamic.
The expedition under the British Colonel William McKay, which surprised and captured the American fort Shelby at Prairie du Chien July 17, 1814, had with them a band of 100 Winne- bago under their chiefs Pesheu or Wild Cat, Sarcel or the Teal, Carrymaunee, Winnosheek, Sar-ra-chau, Sau-sa-maunee, neo- kautah or Four Legs and Black Wolf. As Mckay's fleet of barges and canoes floated down the Wisconsin, a Winnebago was in the party of scouts, who went under cover of night into the town and captured a citizen, whom they carried away to get informa- tion. In deploying before the fort the Winnebago took post above the fort. Two of the Winnebago, discovering some hams in a house, mounted to the roof and began to tear off the shingles to gain an entrance, and were both shot in the thigh. On the second day of the siege Colonel Mckay assembled the Indian chiefs and requested their consent to an assault, but the Winne- bago chief, Sarcel or the Teal, demurred, saying he and his peo- ple remembered taking part with the English in assaulting an American fort, when they were beaten back with terrible slaugh- ter. Sarcel proposed to dig a trench in the sand and blow up the fort, to which Colonel MeKay agreed ; but after a few hours' labor the Indians tired of the work and refused to go ahead. After the surrender, and just before the time appointed for the Americans to give up their arms, a Winnebago cut off the finger of a soldier whose hand was thrust through a port hole in friend- ly greeting. In his reports Coloney MeKay mentions the Winne- bago as in the Indian contingent, and says of them that they were "perfectly useless to him," and severely criticises them. They would not receive officers' orders unless he "held a blanket in one hand and a piece of pork in the other."
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